Nonlinear sweeps have often successfully been employed in the 1960s. However, this area of sweep technology has been neglected since the introduction of digital recording techniques in the Vibroseis system. Now the advent of computerized recording instruments yields a new economical possibility of forming approximately nonlinear sweeps by combining several linear sweeps with or without time gaps to a “Combisweep”. The total duration of a Combisweep may be as long as the maximum available recording time, for example 32 s. Beside the attenuation of correlation noise, the new method has further merits, such as the weighting of predetermined frequency ranges, in order to effect a certain kind of optimum filtering on the emitter side, or in order to compensate to some degree for frequency dependent absorption. In all these applications the Combisweep is considered as one signal in the correlation process. But by correlating with the individual sweeps or a partial combination of them and by applying automatic switching at predetermined times within the gaps between the individual sweeps additional possibilities arise, such as obtaining in one run with a twenty‐four channel recording unit twenty‐four traces with small distances between vibrators and geophones for shallow reflections and another twenty‐four traces with larger distances for deeper reflections. Various Combisweeps and their applications are presented. Copyright © 1979, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved
